


The Infinite Sonnets of Margaret Murry

by hardly_loquacious



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 20:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardly_loquacious/pseuds/hardly_loquacious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she likes to amuse herself, trying to figure out how many possible permutations exist to write a sonnet.</p>
<p>Meg found herself thinking about sonnets more and more over her life.</p>
<p>Sonnets and parallel universes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Infinite Sonnets of Margaret Murry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wei/gifts).



> For wei, who requested, among other things, an adult Meg Murry reflecting on her life. I hope you enjoy it. And thank you to spyglass_ for the beta.

Sometimes she likes to amuse herself, trying to figure out how many possible permutations exist to write a sonnet.

After all, theoretically there should be some kind of definite answer, an actual number that you could calculate, if you knew enough of the parameters involved. There is, after all, a finite number of words, particularly if you limit yourself to the English language. When she’s feeling particularly adventurous, Meg doesn’t; it adds an intriguing layer of complexity to the problem, especially if she doesn’t limit herself to languages spoken on earth. But the point is, because there are a finite number of words, and a finite number of syllables in a sonnet (140, obviously, thanks to the rigors of the form - 14 lines in iambic pentameter), then there is a theoretical maximum number of sonnets that could be written.

It’s not even that hard to imagine how one would do the math. Just imagine a sonnet made up of entirely one-syllable words. That’s 140 words, multiplied by the number of one-syllable words in the English language (she’s assuming perfect independence between words, obviously; Meg usually does for this solution, just to make the math slightly simpler). Now, obviously this calculation wouldn’t give you the total number of possible sonnets, just the number made up of one syllable words. To get the total number, a person would need to add to it the total number of sonnets with two syllable words all the way up to the number of sonnets made up entirely of ten syllable words (though those sonnets would be such grandiloquent gobbledygook, Meg’s not entirely sure anyone would want to _read_ them). And then, added to that, you would need to add up all possible combinations of syllables in between. Not an impossible calculation by any means, assuming one could get reasonably accurate counts of the number of words in the English language of a given syllable. All in all, to anyone who’s well-versed in probability theory, a perfectly plausible calculation.

Meg could figure that out in her sleep.

Because that was the easy part, calculating the theoretical maximum.

Because while the math worked, it also assumed that every possible combination of words would a sonnet make. And there were (at least) two problems with that: rhyme and sense.

The first trick came with the rhyming scheme. All sonnets had them. The stickler in her (aided and abetted by nightmares of English teachers past) wouldn’t let her forget about the rhyme. Even if she limited herself to one of the possible schemes, whether Shakespearean or Petrarchan, or if she was feeling particularly adventurous, Spenserian, to actual calculate a precise number of potential sonnets, Meg knew she would need not only a complete list of all rhyming words in the English language, but their number of syllables. And that kind of detailed data about a language as constantly in flux as English seemed to be, quite simply did not exist.

Although, if it _had_ , Meg was confident she could have done the math, at least where the rhyming scheme was concerned.

The real problem was making the sonnets make sense. Even with all of the mathematical tricks hiding in her brain, Meg had never been able to figure out how to calculate the number of ways of writing a ten-syllable line that conveyed some sort of logical idea to the reader. 

And she probably never would.

This is what came of trying to mix too much math with poetry. The structure of a sonnet may be rigid, but the potential freedom within it made the math difficult.

And Meg had found herself thinking about sonnets more and more over her life.

Sonnets and parallel universes.

She suspected she was more open to the idea of parallel universes than most people.

Meg also suspected she’d seen more of this universe than all but a handful of people. She’d mentally travelled with her brother through time (and potential timelines), on the back of a unicorn, searching for a sequence of events that saved all them from the end of the world. She’d visited one of said brother’s mitochondria with her future husband to make sure that Charles Wallace’s body was able to make enough energy to let him grow up. And she’d travelled through space in the blink of an eye with three former stars.

What had come up again and again, as she’d tried to fight the good fight, was the importance of free will. She’d been only thirteen at the time, but Meg would never forget Mrs. Whatsit’s explanation of the rules of the universe. Every life was like a sonnet. You could predict its basic structure, but not how it would be filled. Everyone had to fill out the sonnet of their life, rhyming scheme and all, by their own choices.

She’d made choices of her own, and was still making them.

They just hadn’t always been the ones she’d expected to make.

If you’d asked her at sixteen what she’d be when she “grew up,” Meg would have have probably shrugged and guessed a mathematician, working away at a university somewhere.

It was the career path she’d been exposed to by _both_ her parents. And eventually she’d woken up and realized that she actually _did_ have the brains for it too. 

But what she hadn’t realized in high school was the cost to that particular choice.

She was the product of two famous academics. It was what she knew.

It had given her experiences afforded to almost no one else (including bonus time travel), but it came with a cost. A childhood filled of months and years spent travelling between universities. Constant compromise about which of her parents would be working from a home office (or in her mother’s case, home laboratory). Which tenured position would they be accepting? Which side of the country would they be spending this summer term on? 

Geographically, the family had stabilized sometime in Meg’s early teens thankfully. But she’d seen any number of professor partnerships while she’d been an undergraduate (academics tended to marry each other, possibly because no one else understood the lifestyle), and they were all the same. Two people, with two different careers, living in some intermediate city between job postings, visiting each other on the weekends. Or, if they were extremely lucky, finding two postings in one place, but being unable to move because the chances of winning that kind of academic lottery a second time were almost non-existent.

And her husband was a marine biologist. Which meant that he gravitated towards the coasts, limiting the possibilities even further.

Besides, after completing her Master’s, Meg found her adolescent impatience and frustration with established rules surfacing unexpectedly.

After all, why should she spend at least four years of her life bowing and scraping to a thesis committee, just to get a piece of paper and a few extra letters after her name?

A doctorate just didn’t seem worth it, particularly since her brain would find math problems to solve, whether she was at a university or not (the recurring problem of the sonnet was a perfect example). She didn’t need a cramped office and a faculty association to do what she loved. 

So, Meg decided there were enough Dr. Murrys in the family already. Even if she’d have been a Murry-O’Keefe.

And then she’d had Poly, or Polly as she now preferred to be known. Her beautiful, brilliant, red-haired daughter. Her firstborn.

Polly, who reminded Meg all too often of her own, often uncomfortable childhood. Of a child thrust in the middle of parents who took calls from the President, who disappeared for months, who were always whirling from one thing to another.

The minute she’d first laid eyes on her oldest daughter, Meg knew she would make a different choice.

A choice that the appearance of each successive little O’Keefe only confirmed.

True, with seven children, Meg had far less time for her math than she’d ever expected to all those years ago when she’d given up an offer of a doctoral position from her master’s supervisor. But she’d kept up with the field when she could. And her children were older now; there was always the possibility of another choice.

Meg smiled to herself. She’d only filled in the first half of her sonnet, after all. At least she hoped so.

Except that sometimes, Meg wondered about other possibilities, other choices, other timelines, other sonnets.

She’d once seen the world changed by choices made by her baby brother.

She wondered what happened in those other timelines, the possibilities. Surely they existed somewhere?

Did each of them have a different Meg?

She liked to imagine that there was one where she was a tenured professor at some prestigious university, maybe the head of the math department, with doctoral students of her own.

Maybe in that one _she_ was the one getting the calls from the President.

Before she could get too wistful, she was distracted from her thoughts. (That was the thing about being a mother of _seven_ , one of them almost always needed something.)

And if she really had been the head of the math department? Well, there was no way she’d have been able to devote as much time to her family. Meg was fairly certain that in that timeline, some of the little O’Keefes didn’t existed.

The thought was enough to make her shudder and any half-formed regret to wither before it got a chance to truly take root.

All it took was the sight of Rosy playing with her new kitten to make Meg more than happy with her current rhyme.

Still, she hoped that somewhere out there, there was a mathematician in one of the other potential sonnets of Meg who was just as happy as she was, in a different way.

It made her wonder how many ways there were to be happy.

Meg suspected that would be a calculation even more complicated than the number of sonnets.

It was a problem she still had half a lifetime to try and solve.

And not one she suspected a department head would have had time to consider.

That was the wonderful thing about choices after all; you never knew quite where yours were going to lead.

And Meg didn’t regret hers for a minute.

She hoped none of the other Megs did either.

One of these days she was determined to calculate just how many of them there were.

She rather suspected that, unlike the total number of potential sonnets, the possibilities were infinite.

xxx

The end


End file.
